Schlagwort-Archive: counter surveillance

Video: The High Priests of the Digital Age are working behind your back to make you confess, and repent.

Speaker Charleyne Biondi argues that today’s mass surveillance infrastructure, its impact on personal behaviour and the resulting conformism resembles the crusade against masturbation in the 18th century. She devolops her narrative along the lines of the emerging surveillance culture in the families and the public of the 18th century, labeling masturbation as an heinous sin, even though before that noone really bothered…

Biondi relates our digital age to a seemingly long gone age of repression, pointing out that there are plenty of signs in today’s culture that repression is on the verge of taking over again.

Governments post reports and data about their operations. Journalists publish documents from whistleblowers. But there is a third type of open data that is often overlooked – the information people and companies post about themselves. People need jobs. Companies need to hire people. Secret prisons do not build themselves.
By making it feasible for anyone to collect public data online in bulk and exploring ways to effectively use this data for concrete objectives, we can build an independent, distributed system of accountability.

The talk „We Lost The War“ was presented at Congress ten years ago, causing quite a stir. It was a prediction of a dark future that did not sit well with many people, but unfortunately many predictions have come true meanwhile. This talk will try to address what comes next, as well as what the hacker community can do to make things better.